Just Eat Commission: How to Find the Rate You Actually Pay
Search for "Just Eat commission" and you will get a confident answer within seconds. A percentage, often to the decimal point, sometimes with a neat table comparing it against Deliveroo and Uber Eats. Most of those numbers are somebody's report of somebody else's report, and a good many are years out of date.
The odd thing is that there is a first-party figure, and it is easier to find than the blog ecosystem suggests. Just Eat states its UK partner commission rates on its own partner signup page, in the "Still have questions?" section, with no login required.
Just Eat publishes two headline rates. In its own words:> "We take a 14% commission for every order you accept on the Just Eat platform and for which you use your own delivery drivers. For example, on a £20 order, our commission is £3.36 (£2.80 + 56p VAT). We take a 30% commission for every order you accept and where we deliver for you. For example, on a £20 order where we deliver, our commission is £7.20 (£6.00 + £1.20 VAT)."
Checked 2026-08-10. Note that Just Eat's own worked examples put VAT on top of the percentage — 14% of £20 is £2.80, and the restaurant is charged £3.36. That is a detail most third-party comparisons drop.
So the headline is knowable. What it does not tell you is what you actually pay. This guide covers both: the published rates, what they leave out, and how to find the only rate that governs your margins — your effective rate.
Why the headline rate is not what you pay
Three things sit between the published percentage and your bank balance.
Published rates describe the standard signup terms, not every agreement. Independent restaurants, small groups and national chains are not necessarily on the same terms, and neither are a restaurant that signed in 2019 and one signing today. The published 14%/30% is the rate on offer at the front door; your contracted rate is whatever your own agreement says. The service model changes the rate substantially. Both platforms that publish show the same shape: Just Eat lists 14% for self-delivery against 30% where its couriers deliver, and Uber Eats lists 13% against 30%. That is a spread of roughly sixteen percentage points on the same order. A quoted "Just Eat commission" figure that does not say which model it refers to is close to meaningless. Commission is not the whole deduction. Even the correct commission figure understates what leaves your account, because VAT is charged on the commission, and refunds, adjustments and any promotional costs come out on top.The practical consequence: a restaurant planning against the headline 14% or 30% alone can be out by several percentage points. That can be the difference between a platform being worth running and not.
Where your actual rate lives
Your contracted rate appears in two places you already have access to.
Your partner agreement. The commission percentage and the service model it applies to are specified in the terms you signed. If you cannot find your copy, Just Eat Partner Centre holds your account documentation. Your weekly invoice. This is the more useful one, because it reflects what is actually being charged rather than what was agreed. Just Eat issues a weekly invoice showing the period's gross order value, the commission deducted, VAT, and any adjustments, netting down to the amount paid into your bank.If the invoice and the agreement disagree, the invoice is what is happening to your money — and it is worth a conversation with your account manager.
Working out your effective rate
Here is the calculation that matters. It needs two numbers, both of which are on documents you already receive.
``` effective rate = (gross order value − net bank deposit) ÷ gross order value ```
Take a settled week. Gross order value comes from the invoice; the net deposit is what actually landed in the bank for that period. The result is the true share of your delivery revenue that never reaches you.
A worked example. Say a week shows £4,000 of gross orders and £2,760 lands in the bank:
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Gross order value | £4,000.00 |
| Net deposit received | £2,760.00 |
| Total deducted | £1,240.00 |
| Effective rate | 31.0% |
Do this for three or four consecutive weeks rather than one. A single week can be distorted by an unusual refund or a promotion ending. A month of effective rates tells you what the platform genuinely costs you, and gives you a baseline against which any future drift is visible. To see what that effective rate does to the margin on each order, our guide to calculating restaurant profit after delivery fees works through it line by line.
Our free commission calculator runs the same arithmetic across all three platforms at once, including the VAT-on-commission step that headline comparisons omit.
The VAT step that catches people out
Commission is a standard-rated supply of services to your business. The platform charges VAT on it, and for a VAT-registered restaurant that VAT is input tax.
Two errors recur:
Treating the commission as VAT-free. It is not. If your invoice shows commission of £560, there will be VAT of £112 on top, and your effective cost is £672. Restaurants that budget from the commission line alone systematically understate their platform costs by a fifth. Restricting the reclaim because some of your food is zero-rated. This one costs money in the other direction. HMRC's guidance is that "hot takeaway food and drink that meets certain tests set out below is standard-rated," while "cold takeaway food and drink is zero-rated, as long as it's not of a type that's always standard-rated." Zero-rated supplies are still taxable supplies, and VAT Notice 700 lets you reclaim input tax relating to "supplies you make which are liable at the standard rate, reduced rate or the zero rate." So the commission VAT is recoverable in full — a mixed hot/cold menu does not restrict it. What the hot/cold split does affect is the output VAT on your sales, which needs apportioning by rate rather than lumping together. Our VAT on delivery commissions guide works through that split, and the VAT commissions tool works out the commission VAT on your own numbers and confirms it is reclaimable in full (it does not split your sales by rate).What HMRC already knows
Whatever your commission rate turns out to be, the gross figure is not private. Under the Platform Operators (Due Diligence and Reporting Requirements) Regulations 2023, reporting platform operators must establish procedures to "collect information about sellers", "verify the information collected", and "identify reportable sellers in respect of each reportable period", retaining records "for a period of five years beginning with the day after the end of the reportable period to which they relate."
The practical implication is the same for every platform: HMRC sees what each platform paid you and, reported separately, the fees, commissions and taxes it took off first, which together rebuild your gross platform revenue, while your bank sees only the net. If your books are built from bank deposits, your declared turnover will be lower than that rebuilt figure, and the difference is precisely the commission you never recorded as a cost. Our guide to HMRC's digital platform reporting rules covers what this means in practice, and the free HMRC readiness checker will tell you whether your current process has this gap.
Reconciling the Just Eat invoice
Once you know your effective rate, the weekly routine is straightforward. Just Eat's weekly-invoice format supports aggregate reconciliation rather than order-level investigation — the full step-by-step is in our guide to reconciling Just Eat payouts, and if you are running more than one platform, the multi-platform reconciliation guide covers handling three different report formats in one workflow.
Key takeaways
- Just Eat publishes its headline UK rates on its partner signup page: 14% where you deliver, 30% where Just Eat delivers, both plus VAT. Use the first-party page, not a blog table.
- The published rate is the standard signup rate. Your contracted rate is in your partner agreement and, more usefully, on your weekly invoice.
- Plan from your effective rate — `(gross − net) ÷ gross` — not from a commission percentage. Commission is only one of several deductions.
- VAT is charged on the commission. Budgeting from the commission line alone understates the cost by 20% of that line.
- Average three or four weeks. One week is noise.
Working out your effective rate once is a useful exercise. Doing it every week, across three platforms with three different report formats, while keeping the VAT correct on each, is the part that quietly consumes an afternoon. That is the gap PayoutLedger is being built to close: upload each platform's report, get VAT-correct journals, and reconcile every payout to the bank deposit. Join the waitlist for early access.
Sources
- Just Eat — UK partner signup, "Still have questions?" (published 14% / 30% commission rates)
- Just Eat Partner Centre (login required — your own account documentation)
- Uber Eats — UK merchant pricing
- HMRC — Catering, takeaway food and VAT (Notice 709/1)
- HMRC — VAT guide (Notice 700), input tax you can reclaim
- Platform Operators (Due Diligence and Reporting Requirements) Regulations 2023, regulation 3 (due diligence and record-keeping)
- Platform Operators (Due Diligence and Reporting Requirements) Regulations 2023, regulation 4 (reporting of information to HMRC)
- HMRC — IEIM901740: what platforms report as consideration (net of fees, which are reported separately)